Biography
Born Bertram Lutz Wilhelm Passmann on November 27, 1957 in Burgsteinfurt, Westfalen, Germany, Bertram started playing the piano when he was just 7 years old. Short time later he discovered the drums and started practicing whenever he could. Soon he became known regionally and when he was 17, one of the biggest German live acts back then needed a drummer. Udo Lindenberg called and aksed if he's ready to play in front of 70,000 people. The rest is history. He became a member of Udo Lindenberg & das Panikorchester by the end of the 70s. Around that time, Peter Maffay started forming his live band and saw Bertram playing with Udo and so Bertram also became a fix member of Maffay's live band. Ever since, Bertram has also been part of side projects along with fellow bandmembers: Average Businessmen (with guitarist Frank Diez), The Raiders of the last Corvette / The Raiders (along with guitarist Carl Carlton), New Legend (with Carl Carlton and keyboardist Pascal Kravetz) as well as Carl Carlton and the Songdogs. Carl, Bertram and Pascal have become friends and also took the chance to produce the first album of a CD Series for guitar lessons, called Play it! where they interpret well known popular songs in an acoustic style, while the second disc contains the same tracks without guitars for the listener to play along.
Throughout the years in many Maffay concerts Bertram also took the microphone and presented covers of other aritsts: Wonderful tonight by Eric Clapton, Go let it out by Oasis, Everything is different now and Last worthless evening by Don Henley and Dying to live by Edgar Winter but also his own songs at the Tabaluga themed concerts where he always represents the character of Arktos the snowman (Schlüssel zur Macht). In 2005 he interprets Eis im September, he wrote himself but was never sung by him at the Tabaluga concerts.
Bertram did a lot of other projects like producing and writing for many well and less known artists, taking short studio jobs as well (Chris Thompson, Tony Carey, Marius Müller-Westernhagen, Robert Palmer, Jimmy Barnes, Eric Burdon). In 1995 he was part of Wolfgang Niedecken's Leopardefell Band and together with fellow members Ken Taylor, Pascal Kravetz and Wolfgang Niedecken, he formed the band playing for Bruce Springsteen on a street gig in Berlin. The video clip of Hungry Heart Live in Berlin has been released back then.
Til today Bertram remains a stable in the German music scene and is widely known as the best German rock drummer.
In the mid 2000's, Bertram started working on a Solo record, working title Optionen, with German lyrics written by Tobias Künzel (Die Prinzen) but it never got released.
Bertram plays piano / keyboard, drums and tought himself to play the guitar as well. Together with Carl Carlton he wrote many well known tracks for Peter Maffay.
With his wife (married 2008) he lives in Seefeld/Tirol and together they manage a gallery "Engelart".
Website: www.bertram-engel-production.de/
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